by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While I spend a lot of my time pointing to January 2025 as the most likely moment in time that the United States might buckle into a “hot” civil war, there is another January that might be just as bad: that of January 2023.
As I keep saying, America’s political system is so rotten, so fucked up that literally the only thing holding everything together is we’re kind of in an Era of Meh. Biden believes in the norms and principles of a liberal democracy such as ours and no unexpected thunderbolt has put undo pressure on the system.
But — and this is a big but — we have the looming 2022 midterms to worry about.
There are a number of different ways this could play out, but the one that is at the forefront of my mind is the totally bonkers — but totally on-brand — ploy on Trump’s part to get himself third to the presidency by becoming Speaker of the House. He would like this idea because he would be in charge of any impeachment proceedings that took place AND all he would have to do is just show up to be named Speaker.
Now, I know, I KNOW this sounds like my usual “hysterical doom shit,” and given that Trump has proven himself such a fucking idiot that he can’t do even the most basic of autocratic plays, this may be just something that people like me worry about while “normal” people raise their grandkids and think of the next concert they’re going to.
So, it’s very possible I’ll be wrong AGAIN about Trump.
But it is very easy to imagine Trump becoming Speaker, impeaching both Biden and Harris and then inciting violence on the part of the MAGA New Right to such an extent that Senate Democrats feel forced to convict them “for the sake of the nation.”
Then Trump comes back early and we’re right back where we started from in January 2021, with Trump demanding to stay in office forever because of “lost time.”
And, yet, it’s possible that what got us into a civil war in the late 2022 – early 2023 timeframe would not be anything as creative as Trump being named Speaker. It could be that when it become clear that Republicans on a local level will nullify any election they don’t like, then, lulz, all hell will break loose. And we have a civil war not in early 2025, but early 2023.
And, yet, I’m being “hysterical.” Even though everything I see points to our current political limbo being untenable. We’re all going to face an existential choice between now and January 2025.
Do you have a passport?
